Community up in arms over murder

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Kathu residents took to the streets on November 6, 2017 over an al-leged premeditated murder be-lieved to be resplendent with racial un-dertones, stimulated by alcoholic influ-ence. The visibly irate, youthful community members wanted to give weight to the denial of bail to the perpetrator's third court appearance on the same day.The hearing was postponed to the fol-lowing day November 07, 2017, but the accused was denied bail by the magi-strate Mr Eshel Davids. The public pro-secutor was Ms Refilwe Zazo. The sus-pect remains in custody until his next ap-pearance scheduled for 08 December 2017.The culprit, Harry Kotze (33), a resident of Kathu, was having a party with a team of friends during the night of Friday Oc-tober 13, 2017. In a drunken stupor, they saw a team of four young men passing by on the road and hell just broke loose against the passer-bys. The young men were greeted with the uncharacteristic vitriol by the boozing team from inside their yard. As provocation deepened, it is alleged, the young men continued un-abated and finally responded equally, raising the adrenalin of the drunken Kot-ze. The tragic incident happened in front of the TVET Kathu College where Kotze and his team were probably braaiing and boozing at a residence. The four victims aged 18-22 received a torrent of blas-phemous remarks, accompanied by the infamous k-word from the white boozers. While the young men were walking on the road, the white gentleman got into his bakkie, approached them at a fierce speed and managed to knock one of them down. Still in a sense of madness, he made a sharp u-turn and bumped another. While two were aground, the other two ran away. The monstrous Kotze viciously chased the two with the intention to finish off his lethal act. One ran and hid himself behind a tree trunk. The forth one was al-so chased, but he successfully escaped from the demon-possessed Kotze. According to sources, Mr Kotze went back to the party with celebratory joy where he is alleged to have said, “I have killed the two k . . . . . s.” The surviving, yet seriously injured Eshric Molino, managed to crawl back home where he narrated the tragedy to his parents who eventually took him to the police station during the same night. Thereafter, the father took his injured son to the Kuruman hospital. On his return from Kuruman, the father directly went to the scene of the tragedy, only to find Alcardo Crew (20) still lying on the ground bleeding profusely. He went to inform the police around 04:00 that the other victim still needed atten-tion. He was taken to hospital, but suc-cumbed to his injuries by approximately 07:00 on Saturday 14 October 2017.Boitumelo Lekgadi, one of the ANC organisers of the protest, said that days of racial discrimination are supposed to be over and that those found perpetua-ting it deserve exemplary penalty to inhi-bit those still harbouring hidden agen-das.